Arthurs Khroustaliov Sartorius - Hangkerum

2019 release

The best music is always the one created by singular musicians, as we learned from the history of jazz. Tom Arthurs, Isambard Khroustaliov (the alias of Sam Britton) and Julian Sartorius are three of them in present times, and from them we can only expect… the unexpected. Arthurs has a duo with Khroustaliov for some years now, Vaucanson’s Muse, and his collaborations with Sartorius aren’t new either, but what we heard by them didn’t prepare us for this trio. Everything in “Hangkerum” happens in the domains of subtlety, nuance and detail, and sometimes it’s difficult to understand who does what in the mix of timbres and textures or where compositon stops and improvisation starts.

All the materials are melted, even considering the foreign origins of all the musical references. The muted trumpet sound is somewhat familiar to the Miles Davis one, but Arthurs couldn’t be more distant from the Dark Prince. His lines and flights make us remember John Taylor and Jimmy Giuffre, but also the Berlin’s Echtzeitmusik scene, composers like Ligeti, Ferrari and Feldman, the pygmies of Central Africa, Brazilian popular music and David Sylvian. Khroustaliov’s electronics may suggest the clynical research work done at IRCAM and STEIM, but it also reflects his collaborations with Aphex Twin and Matthew Herbert. A master of rhythmic patterns, Sartorius give us the very little, through repeated locked grooves, but also an unique perspective of amplification of the unheard, specially when manipulating non-musical objects. The result of the combination of these three inquisitive minds is astonishing.